Tuesday, December 11, 2007

One Amazing Meme

Via Mark Thoma

It is truly amazing that right now everyone in the country is deferring to Paulson and the heads of Countrywide, JPMorgan, Bank of America and others as the best group to work out a solution to this problem. No one is talking about the fact that these people created the problem and profited to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars from it.


One of the most resilient memes in the western (if not human) conscious is that of the ever profiting powers that be. Its one thing to argue that Countrywide, Citigroup and others created the subprime mess, its another to think that they are profiting from it.

Since, when is facing a 10 Billion dollar write down and widespread rumors of bankruptcy profiting to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

6 comments:

  1. Maybe they aren't profiting right this second, but before things went belly-up they seemed to be doing quite well and if their sinister plans are put into action they will continue to profit.

    Personally, I prefer the profitable powers that be like the Singaporean government to the losing-money ones like Cuba or Zimbabwe.

    I think the difference for some people is that they see bad things as necessarily being the result of the intentions of malicious people. It is rather implausible that they just have it out for the regular joe and screw him for no reason, so the screwing must be profitable for them. Their machivellian guile also explains why the Powers That Be continue to Be Powers.

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